ONE-ON-ONE
1 on 1
SP: Regarding regulation, while it is necessary to some extent, it can also just be a burden, let’s face it. Have you come across regulations in the field of payment services where you wonder: how does that help the consumer? How does that even protect the consumer? GF: Sure. There are several regulatory regimes out there now, where I guess I understand from a governmental standpoint, they believe they're doing what's best for Canadian citizens. That being said, we’re largely talking about restrictions so, you have to ask, if they're not helping the consumer, who are they helping? Is it helping retailers? I'm not so sure. It's adding a lot of weight and a lot of responsibility to transactions from start to finish. Each touch point needs to absorb that responsibility, from the banks to the networks to the payment facilitators to the consumers themselves. We're following all the different regulatory aspects, we report to FinTrack regularly on transactions that trigger reporting requirements, but I'm not so convinced that some of the new regulatory aspects are helping. SP: Crypto is clearly going to be on any payment provider's to-do list. Thinking about it from a regulatory side, how do you think gaming regulators should proceed to open up the gaming market to crypto, given that it's part of the world that we live in? GF: Crypto is really interesting and we see it as a huge opportunity in the gaming space. There are a bunch of early adopters and while not many companies want to be on a bleeding edge, being on the leading edge is great. We we've been dipping our toe in the water for a while. Where some of our merchants around the globe are requiring to be paid out in crypto, we've been facilitating that for a number of years now. We're pretty comfortable with the processes and we’re dealing with a pretty stable environment now. In the past there have been a lot of unstable environments, and you had to choose your exchanges carefully. We've always managed to work with a stable exchange so, never had any issues there.
and our developers are always looking to improve and adapt to the different frameworks. Whether that’s end user credit limits or frequency issues we look for ways to protect the consumer, but also mitigate risk with the operator itself by providing alerts and being in concert with them on those alerts and fraud. We're not a regulator, but being intrinsic to the movement of money, we do have our fraud controls, red flags and alerts which are communicated with operators. SP: Fraud and financial crime is one area; the black market is perhaps another. We hear regulators talk about recruiting all parts of the ecosystem in gaming to fight the black market. Is that something that you have been asked to do, or are keen to do? What's your view on how payments providers can get involved? GF : As far as the black market goes, we're very stringent in our onboarding processes and we only work with licensed operators. Another aspect of compliance concerns gray markets. These are sanctioned countries that are not necessarily blacklisted, but are maybe on the FATF grey list. We know that that can happen due to a regulatory change that puts an area offside, however, if that country or the regulatory authorities are determined to maintain compliance, then we know they're going to work towards removing that gray status and we watch that very carefully. We have a no-fly zone in the black areas, so we steer well away from those. The other interesting thing for us is the First Nation part of the market. That's undefined as far as we’re concerned in Canada, so you could call it a gray market area. We've got positive legal opinions regarding it, but it's somewhat of a contentious area for the provinces as well, so we acknowledge it but we don't promote it. I think, the situation will be resolved as each of the provinces move towards a regulatory framework. Ontario's had great success, Alberta is about to launch so we look forward to the rest of the provinces coming into that same regulatory framework.
PAGE 14
IMGL MAGAZINE | MARCH 2026
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker